Five People Johanna Meets in District Thirteen
by escapedreality
Summary: And she's met them all before but that's just a technicality isn't it? Johanna-centric


**a/n:** I have yet to write a stand-alone Johanna piece which is a travesty because I think she's a brilliant character. So here it is!

five people johanna meets in district thirteen

_And she's met them all before but that's just a technicality, isn't it?_

**one. (peeta)**

He snarls when they approach him on the hovercraft; the sound comes from deep in his throat that may have once shocked her, seeing the benign lover reduced to something slightly more than animal. Maybe, she thinks, it would have been hilarious at some point.

But some point has long since fled along with her hair and very likely, her sanity. Peeta's no different- she knows his shrieks as well as her own; they come from the back of the throat, like his snarl, and last forever- the kind of things that rip a throat raw.

She hisses low through her teeth when her thin t-shirt is peeled from her back. Skin and cloth rip and there's no telling which is which anymore. Peeta roars on and on about Katniss and soon the roars become indistinguishable from the cries and the cries morph into body racking sobs.

And she's stripped bare before him once again, as their rescuers bandage and wash them. Her skin looks molted and her hair is nonexistent and the boy who faintly blushed in amusement on an elevator doesn't look at her, doesn't look at anyone.

He screams but no sounds come out.

Peeta Mellark, everyone.

**two. (katniss)**

Katniss Everdeen is not as vapid as the girl on fire was. Nor is she as innocent as the girl on fire was. But she's just as brainless. So Johanna steals her morphling because she knows the girl won't protest, not with Lover Boy's handprints around her neck and remnants of Johanna's handiwork on her arm.

Sharing a room with the girl- woman, really- makes Johanna almost guilty for doubting her. She doesn't trust her. To be honest, she doesn't trust anyone except maybe Finnick and by extension, Annie. And even maybe Haymitch. Johanna laughs to her self- when did she become so soft?

But she understands the girl now.

Brainless (Katniss, she has a name) learns and rebels against authority, wants to only listen to her own authority. She never wanted this, she wanted to save her sister. She was used as a figurehead without consent really, because it was forced. But Johanna can admire that- she knows that as surely as any other Victor does. You give your humanity to win the games, before giving your body to keep playing them. And in the Arena you play for your life and in the Capitol you play for everyone else's.

Johanna has lost the game before. A painful defeat. She can see Katniss beginning to lose as well, dropping points to Coin. The game may be different but the result is more or less the same.

(Later, Johanna will open a drawer with a sprig of evergreen leaves resting gently in it. She will inhale the scent and know that she would probably trust Katniss with her life.)

(And later still, when everything is said and done and Johanna has voted for more Hunger Games she will see that the Katniss was hit by the same wave of defeat as she was.)

Besides, what's not to like? Katniss promised to hitch her a ride to the Capitol and let Johanna kill that bastard who calls himself President.

**three. (gale)**

The first time she saw Gale Hawthorne, it was through a television screen. The families of the future victors were being interviewed, including little Prim Everdeen, who started this whole ball rolling even though she didn't know it. But then Hawthorne had walked in the back door, unaware of the cameras rolling.

"And now we get to meet some of The Girl of Fire's extended family! Gale, how do you think your cousin's doing? Do you think she can win?"

His eyebrows had knit together briefly before he recovered and in that moment, Johanna turned to Finnick and told him that no fucking way they were cousins. Finnick laughed and told her he was all hers.

"Oh, she'll definitely win. She'll burn them to the ground and stand alone and victorious."

He emphasized the _alone._

The first time she met him was in a small, cold cell underneath the Capitol. The door was slammed into and Johanna jumped to her feet, her body protesting- broken ribs, lacerations, and twitching muscles from the last interrogation. She was sure they were back but she would not go without a fight. She had no weapon but dammit she was still a Victor.

Then the door burst open and she snarled, a sound to match Peeta. The intruders held their weapons at her. Until a voice in the back said, incredulously, "That's Johanna Mason!" The soldier in front lowered his weapon and walked toward her, hand extended, like he was trying to placate a wild dog. Which, she supposed, she kind of was. "Miss Mason, I'm Gale Hawthorne and we're here to get you out."

Laughter bubbled inside her. Not simpering giggles but a mad laughter. Miss Mason. Miss, as if she was a lady. She stood shakily, ignoring the proffered hand. The voice in the back spoke again: "Hawthorne, 5 minutes 'til company."

"C'mon Miss Mason." Hawthorne said again. The formality should have sounded kind, but in Hawthorne's rough voice it sounded like an order. Johanna sat back down. "Mason!" he said again. Johanna was still laughing at the boy- man in front of her, too easily able to correlate him with the man on the television she'd seen the previous year. Here was a revolutionary, not Brainless in 13.

"What more do they want me to do for that frigid bitch?" she asked, her voice croaking from disuse. Really, that description probably wasn't fair, with pots and kettles and all. Hawthorne's eyebrows knit together again before advancing toward her, reaching down, and tossing her over his shoulder like the _pompiers_ in her district do when they inevitably pull people out of burning wood homes. She kicked and scratched and demanded he just fucking leave her, okay?

"This ain't for your sake or hers, Mason," he whispered harshly, "There are other people who want to see your sorry ass alive."

Finnick- Annie. She stopped struggling and cursed the day she made promises.

So she her aching head against his shoulder and grits her teeth against the pain of being jostled.

**four. (finnick)**

"You look like shit."

She turns her head to see Finnick pulling up a chair and propping his feet up on her hospital bed. Behind him Katniss is still passed out on drugs.

"Well fucking hello to you too," she says. There's no real venom in her voice though and to be fair, she does look like shit. Only slightly better than death warmed over, Finnick informs her. She chucks a piece of stale bread from her meager dinner at him. He clutches his arm where it hits him and dramatically slumps further into his chair.

"Hanna, you wound me!"

Six months ago, she would have laughed at this. A year ago she ago she would have informed 'Nicky' that how silly, her intention had to been to kill, not maim. And then they both would have laughed until their stomach hurts, drunk on Capitol liquor and stuffed on Capitol food, joking about killing the way only two victors could.

But that was before.

"Finn," she says instead. Her voice still holds no venom, not for the boy in front of her. But it's colder, more withdrawn and Finnick retracts immediately. He grabs her hand gently and says, "Jo..."

Tears threaten to surface and Johanna furiously blinks them away. She has only cried twice since her games. The first after she arrived home from a trip to Capitol, per President Snow's behest, to find her family dead and a white rose sitting next to a videotape on her dresser . She had gone deep into the forest behind the Victor's Village with her axe in hand and hacked away at the largest tree she could find until the anger gave way to tears and she couldn't see straight anymore.

The second was during Annie's game, after the big boy from One cut off her partner's head and she disappeared into the dense grass of the arena. Finnick had disappeared for two days, doing all her could to keep his tribute safe. He stumbled to her apartment the second night, collapsing on her doorstep. He was hopped up on drugs, the crook of his elbow red and inflamed. His pupils were dilated, his breathing erratic and his body bruised. She gathered him up, dragging him to the shower before laying him on the couch. And she had sat with him throughout the night, gently combing her fingers through her hair and watching her friend fall apart as he drifted in and out of nightmares.

By the third time he'd woken up crying for Annie, she couldn't help the tears rolling silently down her face. He didn't deserve this, he wasn't like her. He was too good.

When she trusts her voice not to crack, she ignores Finnick's concerned inquiry and instead asks about Annie. He considers her for a moment, noticing the change in subject. But then his face lights up and for once, Johanna feels like she has done something worthwhile. This is why she saved Katniss- this is the point of the revolution.

**five. (haymitch)**

"You really did it this time Sweetheart," Haymitch said, taking in her appearance as she came in from the rain. She was still rail thin, as thin as if not thinner than some of the Seam kids on their arrival. Her hair had begun to grow back in patches and her body was a molted yellow as her bruises healed. Puckered scars ran across her chin. And in top of that, she was soaking wet, the grey uniform of District Thirteen hanging loosely off her frame.

"Did you talk to Odair? He was the first to mention that I looked like shit," she snarled. She plopped down in a chair outside Coin's command center with an audible huff. Haymitch chuckled.

"Everyone's barely seen the man since he got his girl back."

"Yeah it's revolting," Johanna spat. Haymitch laughed heartily, offering her a towel. She took it gratefully, drying herself with a determined ferocity. Haymitch handed her a new one and she used that as a blanket.

"Excuse me sir, only one per person-" the attendant began.

"Yeah sure, fuck off," Haymitch responded. Johanna gave a weak smile at that and he noticed. "Now, not to rub salt in a would but you have to know you ain't going anywhere, right Jo?" he asked. At the turn of phrase Johanna shivered, bile rising her throat. She paused in the hallway, crouching down and attempting not to heave all over the floor.

Haymitch's face changed from a wry smile to abject panic. "Sweetheart, Jo, I'm sorry I didn't mean anything. God damn, 'Hanna, respond please?"

Johanna breathed deeply, shaking away the memory of searing pain like raindrops. "You're shit at comforting words, you know that right?" she told him shakily, standing and re-wrapping her towel around her shoulders. She waited for the inevitable sarcastic response but instead Haymitch stared at the floor and nodded repeatedly. Johanna studied his face curiously- it was worn, by age and hardship. Dark circles were under his eyes and his face more lined than she remembered. His hair was increasingly grey at his temples. In years he wasn't particularly old but he was long worn out in this game.

She tried a different approach, "So when this is all said and done, do we all get to go live in the nuthouse together?" The question worked and Haymitch snorted.

"You, me and Cresta."

"And Finnick... we can even invite Lover Boy and Brainless."

"Jo- you know they're going to the Capitol right?"

"As if Coin will let anything happen to them, are you crazy?"

Haymitch fixed her with a look, "I know Jo, but they don't."

The sincerity of it, the very realness of the possibility hit her like an avalanche. She swallowed, "Well then I suppose I'll just have to take care of Annie then."

"Am I seeing some maternal instinct from Johanna Mason?" asked Haymitch incredulously.

"Ha ha. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Sisterly affection, maybe," she informed him. _And a promised imprinted on her soul the moment Finnick Odair stepped into her life, all bullshit boyish charm and just as messed up as her. For him, she'd protect Annie with her life._

"That's a start, that's a start."


End file.
